Database Systems and Applications for Assigning Records to Chunks of a Partition in a Non-Relational Database System with Auto-Balancing

2. The method according to claim 1, wherein the natural chunk identifier is greater than or equal to a chunk identifier of a chunk at index k and less than a chunk identifier of another chunk at index k+1, and wherein a mapping function maps the record key to the particular chunk identifier, and wherein k and k+1 are indices of two consecutive chunks that are available at the time of insertion.

7. The method according to claim 1, wherein the non-relational database system is capable of supporting chunking of the records in the same partition so that auto-balancing functionality can be implemented at a query level within an application and is transparent to the hardware-based network storage, wherein the same partition is a collection of records that have a common query attribute for grouping within that same partition.

8. The method according to claim 7, wherein the application is written to follow a particular database schema supported by a database management system (DBMS), wherein information needed to store a record in accordance with the particular database schema that the application is written to follow, comprises: (1) a partition key, (2) a chunk identifier, (3) a record key, and (4) data associated with the record.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the respective record key comprises a string and the natural chunk identifier comprises a hash code the string is mapped to.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein the respective record key comprises a date-time and the natural chunk identifier comprises a time-stamp the date-time is mapped to.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein the data from the particular record includes at least one of a name, an ID, and a creation date-time.

12. The method of claim 1, wherein mapping the respective record key uniquely identifying the particular record to the natural chunk identifier comprises hashing the data from the particular record into an integer.

14. The computer-readable medium of claim 13, wherein the respective record key comprises a string and the natural chunk identifier comprises a hash code the string is mapped to.

15. The computer-readable medium of claim 13, wherein the respective record key comprises a date-time and the natural chunk identifier comprises a time-stamp the date-time is mapped to.